Umerian Space Security Forces
The Umerian Space Security Force's chief responsibilities are patrol of Umerian space and defense of Umeria against hostile powers. Umerian ships are relatively short-ranged in hyperspace, with a few exceptions. It is generally accepted that the Umerian fleet would need extensive logistics support to operate further afield than the Technocracy's nearest neighbors. Weapons of the USSF While many other powers have progressed to the use of weapon systems based on exotic physics beyond the old "Standard Model," Umeria has concentrated on refining relatively simple weapons with more advanced technology. The Technocracy still employs exotic physics in its defenses and propulsion systems, naturally, and research into exotic-physics theory and its applications to weapon design are still funded. But for offensive armament the Umerians take pride in their place among the galaxy's leading producers of hoary old mainstays such as particle cannon and nuclear warheads. Key technologies used include: Missiles Missiles are a secondary weapon in the eyes of Umerian tacticians, particularly in large-scale ship combat. However, a variety of missile designs are used for small and medium combatants, mostly to enable them to damage larger and more dangerous targets. All designs currently in use employ variations on the warhead concept pioneered in the Mk I "Melon" missile. Ignoring individual sub-marks and detailed remarks on capability, examples include: Mk IV "Cantaloupe" Antiship Torpedo The Mk IV carries an extremely powerful warhead and varying levels of focusing. Different versions of the Cantaloupe are designed to direct the torpedo blast into a single jet to penetrate extremely heavy shielding or to hit targets from outside the optimal range of close-in point defense, a wide-angle jet to engage multiple closely spaced soft targets, or an omnidirectional burst (most useful for planetary bombardment, though occasionally employed for mine clearance and other specialized purposes). The Mk IV has two major disadvantages: it is too large to be carried in substantial number by small craft, and that it is ''relatively ''short ranged by the standards of other powers' heavy missiles. Mk V "Honeydew" G.P. Missile The Mk V, in contrast, is a much smaller, lighter, and shorter ranged weapon, with a single wide-angle focusing system for the warhead. The Honeydew lacks the punch to penetrate capital ship armor or shielding, and so is generally deployed in an antimissile/antifighter role. On occasion it has been used long range to cause superficial damage to a heavier target's sensors or other vulnerable surface features. However, its short drive endurance limits it in this role. The Mk V is seldom seen on large starships, where beam weapons are preferred for the point defense role. Instead, it is typically used for small craft. Mk VI "Galia" Antiship Missile The Galia was designed as an attempt to combine the light frame of the Mk V with the antiship punch of the Mk IV, with considerable success. The Galia uses an extended, longer range missile body with more sophisticated sensors and ECCM to aid in getting close to defended targets. The warhead is comparable to that of the Honeydew in yield, but is fuzed for a much more tightly focused close-proximity burst, for maximum effect against single, low-maneuverability targets. The Mk VI can overwhelm light capital ship defenses, at the cost of being much less effective in the Mk V's antimissile/antifighter roles. However, unlike the Mk IV, it is largely ineffective against heavy capital ship defenses, due to the need to detonate close to the target and the lack of brute warhead power. Phased Array Laser (PAL) These systems use very large grids of nanotech elements to generate intense beams of coherent infrared light, by a method analogous to 20th-century phased array radar systems. In atmosphere, these lasers appear green to the eye due to frequency doubling, though the green light observed is but a small fraction of the far more intense infrared radiation of the beam itself. Observation of Umerian laser weapons in operation is not recommended without protective eyewear. PAL panels have several advantages. The activation of individual elements is software controlled, allowing the panel to fire a beam across a wide angular range without moving parts. Since each element can be controlled independently, the PAL can generate multiple beams from the same panel, and traverse the beams independently. Moreover, it is practically impossible for low-energy damage to disable the weapon; destroying a handful of elements has little effect on the overall power of the laser. Offsetting these strengths are two critical weaknesses. The individual emitter elements are sharply limited in maximum output power, and the total power of the PAL scales with the area of the panel. This requires the use of prohibitively large panels in order to generate a beam effective against capital ship armor or shielding. PAL panels are normally seen only on relatively small craft (with high surface-to-volume ratios) for engaging relatively small targets (fragile enough to damage with a PAL beam). The nearby state of Tianguo is a leader in phased array laser technology, thanks to more advanced nanotechnological research; Umerian PAL weapons lag considerably behind Tianguo phasers in output power. Free-Electron Laser The free electron laser uses a high energy recirculating electron beam passing through an intense magnetic 'wiggler' field to generate a beam of coherent light. The main disadvantages of this weapon are that it is energy-inefficient by modern standards, and that it demands great linear acceleration distance, and therefore a very long barrel for a given power output. For pure space combat, the FEL is largely obsolete. However, the FEL has one great advantage: frequency agility. An FEL can be 'tuned' to generate a coherent laser beam at any of an extremely wide range of frequencies, panning across the entire visible spectrum and well into the near-infrared and near-ultraviolet. Therefore, it can be tuned to penetrate great thicknesses of atmosphere, or to exploit the resonance frequencies of most materials and certain types of energy shielding, given sufficient time to make adjustments. Therefore, the FEL retains a niche role in planetary bombardment, allowing a ship in atmosphere to fire for maximum effect against surface targets, including hardened and shielded ones that would otherwise require a much more energetic barrage to defeat. Electron Cannon Filling a niche between the relatively low-power PAL and low-efficiency FEL on the one hand and the extremely large proton cannon on the other is the mainstay of Umerian light capital ship and secondary armament: the electron cannon. Thanks to their high charge-mass ratio, electron beams can be brought up to high energy over short acceleration distances; this makes turreted electron linacs a viable choice for small starships that could not mount heavier weapons. However, electron beams are nearly useless except in vacuum; the beam disperses very quickly. Moreover, the same high charge-mass ratio that makes them easy to accelerate makes them easy to deflect; electron beams are bad at penetrating heavy shielding, though relatively effective against armor due to secondary radiation. Proton Cannon The pride of the Umerian arms industry is its superheavy proton cannon designs. Thanks to centuries of research in particle accelerator research, Umeria produces some of the most effective particle beam weapons in the galaxy, with excellent beam focus, energy efficiency, and destructive power. The design of Umerian capital ships capitalizes on this strength with a spinal armament design. The standard Umerian particle cannon fires a continuous stream of five-nanosecond pulses, at a repetition rate of ~40 MHz: forty million pulses a second. This provides, in effect, a continuous beam. The individual pulses are weak by the standards of space warfare, but the cumulative effect of several million such pulses is devastating. The beam passes down a line of superconducting acceleration chambers and containment magnets; these form the 'barrel' of the weapon, which can stretch up to multi-kilometer lengths for dreadnought-grade beams. At the muzzle, fine adjustment of beam targeting is performed using a set of steering dipoles, which can be adjusted to aim the beam anywhere within a cone roughly half a degree in width. Coarse adjustment is handled with the ship's maneuvering thrusters Heavy proton cannon can be used either to inflict massive damage on single hardened target, or to create a 'wall' of closely spaced particle bolts by raking the beam back and forth through a target volume. This second fire mode is particularly useful for antimissile defense.